The Flag
Joseph Paris / France / 2023 / World Premiere / 93 min
A furious, iconoclastic attack on power and the media in a modern France where Islamophobia has become mainstream and inequality is growing from the suburbs to the boulevards.
‘The Flag’ is a manifesto. A furious, militant rallying cry to French (and Western) society where anti-Muslim sentiment has become mainstream. This is felt in the Parisian suburbs, where many young people have experienced the conflicts with the police first hand. The media cover the riots and anger, but not the pain and humiliation. Joseph Paris does, however, in his anti-authoritarian film which mobilises the entire arsenal of cinematic techniques to deconstruct the Islamophobic discourse that has crept into the official media since the terrorist attacks of 2015. Collages, split-screens and a Guy Debordian vandalisation of the (media) image itself testify to Joseph Paris’ active background in the ‘copyleft’ movement and video art. An alarming and radically critical report from a time when social divisions are widening and clashes between state power and civilians are on the rise.